by B. B. Hamel
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even question me, even though claiming that I was being followed probably sounded nuts. He didn’t hesitate to believe everything I was saying, which made me feel good. He took me seriously, which was maybe more than I deserved after everything that had happened.
“Let’s go somewhere to calm down,” he said. “Then I’ll bring you home. Okay?”
“Sure.”
We drove for ten minutes in silence before he pulled off the road. He got out of the car and I followed him down a short path toward the bay. The path ended in a turn-around with a little bench at the end of it overlooking the water. Carter sat down on the bench and I sat down next to him, looking out over the water.
“I used to come here in the early days of Valor,” he said. “When things were crazy. I needed silence to think sometimes.”
“What was that like, being a kid and starting a company?”
“Hard to describe it,” he admitted. “On the one hand, you were the boss, but on the other, you’re still just a kid. People looked at me for advice and guidance but also looked at me like the twenty-year-old I really was. I couldn’t drink but I could order adults twice my age around. It was totally bizarre.”
“You’re still pretty young.”
He nodded. “But I’ve learned a lot in the last fifteen years.”
“The world has changed a lot,” I said.
“It has,” he agreed. “There was so much optimism around the internet back then. People thought it was going to change the world. And it has in a lot of ways, but not as radically as we wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we thought it would make everyone all love and peace and equal. Instead, we got Facebook and Twitter, which is all about being empty and fake. They replaced the real stuff with the fake stuff all to get more advertising dollars. Facebook is just one big advertising platform these days.”
“Everyone knows that. But there’s a lot of good stuff on there, too.”
“Sure. Where there are people, there are good things and bad things. I’m just saying, our expectations have been lowered a lot since I started out.”
“Have your expectations changed?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer right away, staring out over the water. I watched him and felt that strange thing inside of me again, that welling-up of genuine tenderness. I wanted to reach out and touch his face, to tell him that everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t. There was a closeness and a distance still between us that I didn’t exactly understand yet.
“Yes,” he said finally. “My expectations have been lowered in some ways. But in others, they’ve gotten higher. I believe in what my company can do. I believe we can bring meaningful change to the world through the internet still, and it doesn’t need to be just about advertising dollars. I guess I’m still an idealist at heart.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve done a lot already.”
“I want to do more. It’s just hard. Sometimes I feel like I’m two people.”
“What are the two people like?” I asked, fascinated that he was opening up so much.
“I’m part selfish asshole and part idealist, I guess.”
I laughed. “I just get the selfish asshole part mostly.”
He grinned at me. “That’s what you like.”
“I don’t know. I like idealists, too.”
“You get that part of me. It’s just harder to see.”
“Right. Because it’s buried underneath all that cocky asshole behavior.”
“Pretty much.”
We both laughed together and I felt a little bit of the stress of the day fade away. Things weren’t better, exactly, but they didn’t feel so pressing. I didn’t feel like I was in a rush to do something, anything.
“Come on,” he said finally. “Let’s get back.”
“Okay,” I said, and we stood. As we walked back to the car, I suddenly grabbed his hand and stopped. He looked back at me, eyebrows raised.
“I want to see that other side of you,” I said softly. “Eventually, I mean. If you’ll let me.”
He looked at me then took my chin and gently kissed me. “We’ll see,” he said finally. “You’ll have to earn it.”
“Asshole.” I couldn’t help but smile.
He smiled back as we reached the car, got inside, and headed back home.
22
Carter
I parked the car and took Emily inside, making sure she got into her apartment okay. I shut the door behind her and headed back toward my room, anger rolling through my body.
I couldn’t prove that any of this was the work of Bruce and Cox, but I knew it had to be them. All of the scare tactics were classic Bruce, and the spy shit was right up Cox’s alley. The guy following Emily had to be Cox’s doing, but I couldn’t decide what the point was.
They must have wanted her to know they were following her. Emily wasn’t exactly trained to spot a tail like the vast majority of people weren’t. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to spot a tail unless they wanted to be spotted. Which meant that Cox wanted Emily to know she was being followed and, by extension, wanted me to know as well.
Why? What fucking game was this asshole playing?
It had to be another scare tactic. They were trying to force me to step down completely from Valor and were willing to do whatever it took. Scaring Emily and using that fear against me was just part of their mind-fuck.
I wasn’t going to give in to that. They wouldn’t actually hurt Emily, no matter how much they threatened it. And if they wanted to release all of the photos to the media, they could have done that already.
No, there was something else, some other thing going on. Until I knew what exactly they wanted, I wasn’t going to do a damn thing. I wasn’t going to bend to the will of lesser men just because they were playing some fucking game.
I wanted to kill them. I wanted to hunt them down and murder them in some glorious shootout. Unfortunately, the real world didn’t work that way. As soon as I fired a single bullet, I’d likely get arrested or killed myself. No, shootouts were for fantasy books and the movies, and not for real people. As much as I wanted to kill them, I knew that I couldn’t.
I had to find some other way to get back at Bruce and his helpers.
As I headed back to my room, an idea slowly came forward. It was a half-baked idea, vague and not fleshed out. I didn’t know exactly how it would work, but I had a notion. Not thinking too much about it, I got out my phone and called Nelson Pitts, my closest ally on the board.
“Carter,” he said, answering right away. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Nelson. I was actually wondering if you could help me out?”
“Sure thing, of course. What do you need?”
“Financial records. The stuff only the board has access to.”
He paused. “What for?”
“Can I say it’s for a project but leave it at that??
“Okay,” he sighed. “How far back?”
“Since Bruce joined the board.”
He groaned. “You’re not thinking of trying something, are you?”
“Of course I am. Help me out, Nelson.”
“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll send a courier with the papers when I have them.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“A big fat fucking one.” He hung up the phone.
I smiled to myself and opened the door to my room, still planning. As soon as I stepped inside, though, I knew something was wrong.
It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I usually had papers and notebooks lying around with ideas and numbers in there. Some of it was junk, well, the vast majority was junk. But some of it was actually pretty important, financial stuff surrounding the mansion and my other ventures. Stuff that I wouldn’t want someone to steal.
It was all gone. I tore through the drawers and realized that everything had been taken, every journal, every notebook, and every paper. Everything
was gone.
I stood there, shocked, staring around. There was no note, no nothing. Just an emptiness that spoke louder than anything else.
I got Marty on the phone right away, and he assured me that the security cameras didn’t show anyone entering my room since I left in the morning. He double-checked all of the logs and couldn’t see any access from any codes that Cox may have known the password for. I told him to send me all of the data and hung up the phone.
Distraught, I left my room. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. Every time I thought it was as bad as it could get, somehow they made it even worse. Without my papers and notebooks, I couldn’t really work. Years of ideas, data, and hard calculations had been stolen, along with important other documents, stuff I didn’t want Bruce and his bastards to see. I had a life outside of Valor, and what I did with my own personal money was none of their concern.
It was all gone now. I didn’t really realize where I was going until I entered my music room. I poured myself a double whisky, put on a Bowie record, and sat on the sofa, staring at the wall.
I got through the entire A-side of Station to Station, doing nothing but drinking and listening. My glass was half empty by the time the last note of the last song placed and the tone arm slid across the dead wax. I listened as the turntable’s mechanical parts clicked into place and lifted the tone arm up, carried it across the record, and gently lowered it down in the run-in grooves to play the A-side over again.
I sighed. That was the damn problem with old technologies. There was no way for me to just listen to the whole record. I had to get up and flip the stupid thing, and I didn’t feel like getting up.
Station to Station’s piano started, followed by that bass line, and I started to lose myself again. Just after it started, I heard a knock at the door, which jolted me from my funk.
Emily stepped inside, not bothering to wait for a response.
“I thought you’d be in here,” she said. “You know this music is really loud, right?”
I laughed. “Didn’t notice.”
“What are you doing?”
“Listening. Wondering why I bother with records.”
“What do you mean?” She walked over toward me, gorgeous and sexy.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
“What is this?” she asked, gesturing at the turntable.
“It’s David Bowie. Station to Station.”
“Oh. I’ve heard of that.”
“It’s good,” I said, warming up to my subject. “Bowie said that he was on so much coke and shit that he couldn’t remember recording it at all. His rhythm guitarist, Carlos Alomar, said something similar.”
She laughed, walking over and sitting down next to me. “I didn’t know Bowie was big into drugs.”
“He was for a little while. I think everyone was in the ‘70s. He also got into the occult.”
“Occult? Like, witches and wizards?”
“Sort of. He was into Kabbalah at the time, which is like a Jewish magic I guess. Apparently, Station to Station was Bowie’s grandest magical ritual, but I don’t know about that.”
“What kind of magic was he trying to make with this?” she asked, laughing.
“Who knows? Probably trying to summon more coke.”
“Oh, of course, the coke demons.”
“Coke angels, you mean.”
“Of course. Coke angels.”
We laughed together and leaned back into the couch as Bowie sang, It’s not the side effects of the cocaine. I’m thinking that it must be love.
“Are you okay?” I asked her finally.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I won’t let those bastards get close to you again. I promise.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I don’t think they wanted to hurt me. Probably just wanted to scare me.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it was just a distraction.”
“Distraction?”
I groaned as the memory of my empty room came back to me. “Someone stole a lot of important papers from my room today.”
“What?” she asked, suddenly alert.
“I’m assuming it was Cox. Probably happened right around the time that I was grabbing you.”
“No way,” she said.
“He probably had a backup security code. Marty is working on it.”
“Shit. Carter. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’ll survive.”
“Still.” She looked down at her hands and I realized what I had done.
“Shit, Emily. It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” I said seriously, leaning toward her. I took her chin and tipped her face toward me. “Not at all.”
“I’m your weakness.”
“Hardly.” I grinned. “I don’t have any weaknesses.”
“Don’t joke. I’m the weapon they’re using against you.”
“You’re not a weapon. If you weren’t here, they would have found something else.”
“I’m hurting you.”
“They’re hurting me,” I said fiercely. “Through all this fucking shit, you’re the only good thing.”
She stared at me for a second and then I kissed her, hard and passionate. I knew even as I kissed her that it was true, what I had just said. It was actually truer than she realized.
She was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. I couldn’t explain that to her, not exactly, but it was the truth. So much had happened in my life, and so much of it was empty. As soon as you made some money and found some success, people appeared out of nowhere wanting things from you. Even if you barely knew them, people felt like they were owed something. I had a lot of friends, but very few real ones. Emily was the realest person I’d ever met and made me feel ways I never thought I would again.
We kissed as the song changed, my hands slowly exploring her body. My cock was hard as fuck, and although this was again the one thing we both knew we shouldn’t do, there was no going back. Not anymore, not for me at least.
Suddenly, she pushed me back and straddled me, hands on my shoulders. I smirked at her, hands on her ass. “Is this why you came here?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, smiling. “Not at first, anyway.”
She kissed me again, our mouths open, tongues stroking each other. I loved the way she tasted, the feeling of her body on top of mine, and I knew what I wanted from her. She was the only person I knew that could give it to me, that intense feeling of desire and pleasure.
Her hand slid down my chest and finally pushed under my jeans, finding my hard cock. She started kissing my neck as she stroked me.
“I like when you take charge,” I said, smirking.
“I thought you might.” She slid back and down onto the ground, kneeling in front of me. My blood pumped fast through my veins as she pulled down my jeans, taking them off and tossing them aside.
“Look at you,” I whispered as she began to slowly stroke my cock.
“What do you want?” she asked.
I leaned forward, kissing her lips. “My cock in your fucking throat,” I said, taking her hair.
She began to suck me, sliding my tip into her mouth, suctioning hard. She worked up and down as I held her hair back, gripping it by the roots. I pushed her down, groaning as my cock slid into her throat.
She made a slight gag and pulled back, breathing deep and stroking my cock, slick from her spit. She went back to work and I lost myself in her warm mouth sucking my cock, sliding up and down, sucking the tip before pushing deep down her throat.
I held her there, groaning, and thrust my hips into her throat, fucking her mouth. She let me do whatever I wanted to her, the dirty fucking girl, and I knew she was mine. She pulled back again, stroking me, then pulled her shirt off.
“Perfect,” I said and she smiled.
“What’s perfect?”
“You. This.” I took her hair as I reached forward to tease her nipples. I pressed her back do
wn on my cock. “Your body is perfect. Your mouth around my cock is perfect. I love when you gag but keep sucking it. You’re such a dirty slut for me, but you know what you have to do. You’re in my house, so you play by my fucking rules.”
She moaned, sucking me faster. I knew she liked it when I talked dirty to her, though I was having trouble concentrating. It felt so fucking good to have her lips Hoovering my thick cock. She tried as hard as she could to take as much as as possible into her throat, but I was just too big for her and we both knew it. Still, that in itself was fucking sexy as hell as she took my cock deep again, gagging but still sucking.
Pleasure was rocketing through my brain. I couldn’t think of anything but her sucking my cock with a wild abandon that drove me insane. She pulled back again, stroking me, her breasts pushed forward, pure lust in her eyes.
“Come in my mouth,” she said. “Please, Carter. I want to taste it.”
“Your dirty slut,” I said, smirking at her. “Are you going to swallow every drop?”
“Yes,” she moaned. “Please. Do it.”
I pressed her head down and she sucked me faster, two hands on my shaft. She jerked me as she sucked my tip, sliding up and down, her hair spilling all around her. She sucked me as fast and as hard as she could, trying to get every drop from my fucking balls.
I couldn’t hold back. Not after she just begged me to come down her pretty little throat. I watched her go to work, hands in her hair, and I knew I was close.
The orgasm ripped through me, but that didn’t slow her down. I came hard, shooting every last drop into her mouth and throat, and she just kept sucking me. She was a dirty fucking girl for me and moaned the whole time that I was coming, swallowing every drop, and cleaning me off when I was finally done.
She smiled, climbing up next to me, and I kissed her hard. I didn’t care if I could still taste myself, I needed to feel her close in that moment. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into my lap, kissing her deep and hard.
Finally, we pulled apart. Her cheeks were flushed as she smiled at me, and she looked incredible, beautiful and free.
“Was that what you needed?” she asked.
